CSAW - Climbing Strengths and Weaknesses

Most rock climbers want to improve their climbing, and generally try to achieve this via training. Most often this training focuses on developing finger strength and/or power. However, rock climbing is a multi-faceted activity that requires a wide range of skills to be mastered for an individual to realize their potential. The best way for a climber to improve is to identify which of these skills they are weakest at, then to focus their training on these weak points. Often, it isn't finger strength or power, but aspects such as footwork, confidence, technique, etc.

This helps an individual to reliably identify what these weaknesses are in the first place. Without knowing what is really holding you back the tendency is work on those things you enjoy working on - which is often those aspects of your climbing that are already strong, and for which gaining further improvements requires a disproportionate effort, results in decreasingly small improvements, and have minimal impact on your overall climbing level.

The approach taken by the app is to get several individuals that are familiar with your climbing (including yourself) to rate you according to a number of attributes that describe various aspects of climbing performance. For example, the set aimed at Sport climbers contains the following seventeen attributes:

Tenacity

Confidence

Technique

Fear

Core

Finger Strength

Endurance

Power

Power Endurance

Flexibility

Footwork

Body Position

Route Reading

Pace

Preparation

Flow

Resting Ability

If the initial sets of attributes dont't capture the aspects of your performance you want to measure, then they can be duplicated and customised as you see fit.